Henry George on Property Rights: Reply to John Pullen

John Pullen argues that Henry George's proposal to make land common property is inconsistent with his proposal to tax rent. This reply argues that George's two formulations are consistent, and that Pullen has confused common property with state property. On the other hand, Pullen's conception of property as composed of a basket of rights focuses attention on the question of whether, as trustee of the common property, a Georgist regime should be understood to have certain rights (and obligations) to constrain private land use decisions.     

Collateral,Guaranties and Rural Credit in Developing Countries: Evidence from Asia

The paper reviews the theory of the impact of loan collateral, and in particular land collateral, in institutional and non-institutional rural credit markets. Evidence from three Asian developing countries is presented, showing extensive use of land collateral among institutional lenders in countries where such collateral is legal. The use of land collateral is more common than other forms of security, except in places where legal inhibitions on mortgaging agricultural land exist. Non-institutional lenders are less inclined to use land collateral. However, lenders who do not have links to borrowers in matters other than finance are more likely to use loan securities. Estimates of instutional credit supply and demand in rural Thailand confirm that the pledging of land collateral affects the supply of credit more than group guaranty. It is also shown that larger farmers are more likely to utilize land collateral. The conclusion is that land collateral is preferred by instutional lenders as it reduces creditworthiness assessment costs. Attempts to ban or limit collateral use by decree are motivated by equity considerations, but they will cause loss of efficiency. Simplification of ownership verification and other policies reducing the transaction cost of collateral pledging will mitigate the negative equity implications of collateral.     

A measure of total factor productivity with biased technological change

The paper presents a new measure of total factor productivity (TFP) that also takes into account the effect of biased technological change. With this methodology, we can distinguish the effects resulting from the introduction of neutral or biased technological change on TFP, called neutral factor productivity and biased factor productivity (BFP), respectively. The new measure of TFP also holds in extreme cases where only the effect of neutral/biased technological change is presented. In particular, the BFP component increases (decreases) when the productivity of the cheaper (more expensive) factor increases. Moreover, the TFP holds up to the modification of both units of measure and to the costs of factors. Finally, the intensity of the BFP is independent of the direction of the technological change.